EXTRA MEDIUM

Like many of his favorite songwriters (John Hartford, Lucinda Williams, Jeff Tweedy), Izaak Opatz is an ungulate in lifeAEs winter pasture, chewing on and metabolizing disappointment, heartbreak, and the other tough stuff into enjoyable musical carbohydrates. A compulsive metaphorager (and inveterate wordplayboy), Opatz breaks it all down with enzymes of wry humor, thoughtful simile and close observation - a therapeutic process of narrativizing his own life that, almost as a byproduct, turns out savory nuggets of literate, confessional pop. Where 2018AEs 'Mariachi Static' drew from OpatzAEs fragmented love life as a seasonal Park Service employee and resonated especially with the sensitive dirtbag set, 'Extra Medium', his latest release, splits time between romantic Hindenburgs across his native Montana, up the East Coast, and in faraway Los Angeles. Montana and LA especially decorate the album, supplying wells of metaphor and scene-making, and as characters in their own right - LAAEs alternately charming (oIn the Light of a Love Affairo) and discomfiting (oEast of Barstowo), and, in oBig Sandyo, Montana evolves from setting to subject as the girlAEs feelings he traverses it to see prove less than his own feelings for the state.'